Russia stages massive WW2 parade despite Western boycott
- 22 minutes ago
- Europe
Russia is staging its biggest military parade, marking 70 years of victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
Thousands of troops are marching on Red Square in Moscow, and new armour being displayed for the first time.
More than 20 heads of states are in Moscow, but many world leaders are boycotting the event because of Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis.
As the event began, President Vladimir Putin said international co-operation had been put at risk in recent years.
Russia denies claims by the West that it is arming rebels in eastern Ukraine. More than 6,000 people have been killed since fighting began in April 2014 in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
North Korea announces test of submarine-launched missile
Kim Jong-un supervised firing of ‘world-level strategic weapon’, says regime’s official press, following threat to attack South Korean ships
North Korea has said it successfully test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine.
Kim Jong-un personally attended the test launching of what he described as a “world-level strategic weapon”, the official Korean Central News Agency said. The report did not reveal the timing and location of the launch. A day earlier the North accused the South of breaching its maritime territories and threatened to launch attacks on ships.
The regime leader praised the test launch as an “eye-opening success” and declared it gave North Korea a weapon capable of “striking and wiping out in any waters the hostile forces infringing upon the sovereignty and dignity of [North Korea].”
On Kim’s orders the submarine submerged and fired the missile from underwater into the sky, the agency said.
Tehran switches 'death to America' posters for Pablo Picasso
Skeletons of the Past: Helping Europe's War Dead Find a Final Resting Place
Thomas Schock is standing on a plot of land in Redczyce near Znin in western Poland. The region was known during World War II as the Reichsgau Wartheland, formed from Polish territory annexed by the Nazis in 1939. Redczyce then became Rettschütz and Znin became Dietfurt. It's a blustery day in March, 70 years after the war ended. The birch and pear trees are bare. "Ideally, the troops who died would have been advancing," says Thomas Schock. That would mean there might be grave plans, sketches and photos. "It's harder if the troops were retreating." A bulldozer behind him has already cleared away a meter of ochre soil. "Stop!" yells Schock. He's noticed a dark patch in the sand. "Shadows of corpses," he says.
Why Egypt's conservative judiciary doesn't always do Sisi's bidding
Jailing Islamists and sentencing them to die, Egypt's judiciary often seems to be an arm of the authoritarian regime. But the giant bureaucracy acts in its own interest, sometimes at odds with Sisi's.
CAIRO — An independent judiciary is often seen as indispensable for the healthy functioning of a democracy.
So it may come as a surprise to the casual observer that in Egypt, where the judiciary has appeared to do the bidding of authoritarian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – suppressing dissent, jailing thousands, sentencing Islamists to die by the hundreds – the massive bureaucracy does have some independence. But it is better understood to be acting in its own self interest and that of its members.
Since the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, more than 40,000 people have been arrested. Egypt’s prisons are choked with inmates, and mass trials have become the norm.
China pursuing huge South China Sea land reclamation: US
By Dan De Luce5 hours ago
China has dramatically ramped up its land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea this year, building artificial islands at an unprecedented pace to bolster its territorial claims in the disputed area, US officials said Friday.
The rapid construction of artificial islands in the strategic waters comes to 2,000 acres (800 hectares), with 75 percent of the total in the last five months, officials said.
"China has expanded the acreage on the outposts it occupies by some four hundred times," said a US defense official.
The United States did not endorse land reclamation by any of the countries with territorial claims in the South China Sea, but "the pace and scale of China's land reclamation in recent years dwarfs that of any other claimant," the official said.
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